169: iOS Intelligentsia 🧠 Fantasia Sound Lab👂 and Tracking Stolen Campaign Signs🪧

Watch the video!
https://youtu.be/KVAdqAp0Iq4

In the News blog post for October 25, 2024:
https://www.iphonejd.com/iphone_jd/2024/10/in-the-news750.html

00:00 A Swift Mardi Gras!
01:54 iOS Intelligentsia
23:21 Cameras in a Sound Lab
31:04 Mini iPad, Maximum Reviews
35:23 Tomorrow is Better than Today…
41:44 Father Son Panorama Bonding
48:12 iPhone on a Bookcase
50:24 More Driver’s License in Apple Wallet!
51:21 Where Y’at? Tracking Campaign (Signs)
54:00 Brett’s AirPods Tips: Toggling Noise Control Modes
59:57 Jeff’s Apple TV Tip: Manually Update Your Device

Ryan Christoffel | 9to5Mac: iOS 18.1 has the first Apple Intelligence features, here’s what’s coming

Apple’s Craig Federighi Explains Apple Intelligence Delays, Siri’s Future and More | WSJ

Rebecca Jarvis | Good Morning America: Inside Apple's secret audio labs ahead of the AirPods Pro 2 update

Chris Welch | The Verge: Apple’s AirPods Pro hearing health features are as good as they sound

Nicole Nguyen | The Wall Street Journal: We Tried Apple’s New Hearing Test—and the New AirPods Pro Hearing Aids

Federico Viticci | MacStories: iPad mini Review: The Third Place

Jason Snell | Six Colors: iPad mini 2024 review: A familiar friend gets an A.I. refresh

Ben Cohen | The Wall Street Journal: Tim Cook on Why Apple’s Huge Bets Will Pay Off

Zac Hall | 9to5Mac: Apple Vision Pro gratitude

Juli Clover | MacRumors: Astropad Launches 'Bookcase' for Turning an iPhone Into an E-Reader

Juli Clover | MacRumors: iPhone Driver's License Support Expands to Iowa

Lucas Ropek | Gizmodo: Woman Says She Used an Apple AirTag to Track Down Stolen Kamala Harris Sign

Brett’s AirPods Tips: Toggling “Noise Control” between Transparency, Adaptive, and Noise Cancellation on your AirPods Pro 2. You can either swipe down on Control Center and long-tap on volume slider, then tap below. Or long-press on AirPods Pro stem - how many times depends on your settings.

Jeff’s Apple TV Tip: Apple TV + YouTube problem: Manuall

Chapters

• 0:00 A Swift Mardi Gras!
• 1:54 iOS Intelligentsia
• 23:21 Cameras in a Sound Lab
• 31:04 Mini iPad, Maximum Reviews
• 35:23 Tomorrow is Better than Today…
• 41:44 Father Son Panorama Bonding
• 48:12 iPhone on a Bookcase
• 50:24 More Driver’s License in Apple Wallet!
• 51:21 Where Y’at? Tracking Campaign (Signs)
• 54:00 Brett’s AirPods Tips: Toggling Noise Control Modes
• 59:57 Jeff’s Apple TV Tip: Manually Update Your Device

Transcript

- Welcome to In the News for October the 25th, 2024.

I am Brett Burney from appsinlaw.com. - And this is Jeff Richardson from iPhone JD.

Brett, I don't know if you can feel the excitement through the intertubes, but here in New Orleans right now, it's the Taylor Swift concert this weekend and the city of New Orleans is going crazy.

Like literally as I'm coming into work this morning, there's people walking around with t-shirts, every establishment you can go to for restaurants or anything else has got specials.

Taylor Swift has truly taken over New Orleans.

So anyway, if I sing some Taylor Swift songs, you'll know. - The real question, are you going?

Are you going to be-- - No, no, no, I'm not going in any way, shape, or form, no.

So, but the excitement-- - And no members of the family?

(laughs) - No, no, no, no, but the Swifties are amongst us and we can feel it, so. - Well, I have to tell you, since you're bringing it up, my daughter a year ago was able to get in some kind of a lottery.

I think you and I have talked about this offline because obviously this is what no one cares about, right?

But she was able to get in some kind of like a pre, pre, pre-sale, pre-lottery, pre-everything.

And a year ago, we bought Taylor Swift tickets for a very good price.

It was like under $200 each, which I told her-- - Which was amazing, yeah. - Either all four of us are gonna go or I'm gonna resell them, you know, and pay for your entire college year.

And so we're actually going, I think it's, is it a week?

Maybe two weeks.

And then Indianapolis is the show we're going.

So hey, any Swifties out there that are gonna be at Indianapolis, I'll be happy to see you there along with my other, you know, 80,000 friends that are gonna be there for that night. - Of course, of course. - So fun.

Okay, well, okay, well, let's get back to the things people are actually probably interested in.

Although, you know, Taylor Swift, hey, you know, who can stand with her?

I mean, she's like just an amazing life person right now.

Anyway, I'm excited to talk with you this week, but I'm even more excited to talk with you next week, Jeff, because as we know, there are some exciting announcements that are already getting the buzz.

In fact, Greg Joswiak, Jos himself, posted on X/Twitter, "Mark your calendars," or he's so cute, isn't he, Jeff?

"Mack your calendars."

We have an excellent week of announcements ahead starting on Monday morning.

Now we've kind of gotten some of the rumors and some of the thoughts that this, something was gonna happen next week, but wow, I mean, you know, it's not Taylor Swift level of excitement, but I'm pretty excited about next week as well. - Yeah, it looks like we're gonna have some new Macs with the M4 processors announced next week.

So maybe a MacBook Pro, you know, anything else could be a Mac mini.

So that's exciting.

What I'm excited for are the iOS related announcements.

And for those who really know what they are, Apple has already, they've actually said that we are going to see next week iOS 18.1.

And 18.1 is, you know, sometimes those 0.1 updates are, you know, some minor, but nice things.

This is a big one.

This is a really big one this year.

I mean, just to sort of start at a high level and what we'll dig down onto these things, it's gonna change AirPod Pro version twos that they can become hearing aids.

That's major, we'll talk about that in a second, I'm sure.

It's going to introduce some changes to the camera control if you have the newest iPhone.

But you know, the one thing that Apple is really promoting is Apple intelligence.

That, you know, we are going to see just so many Apple intelligence improvements over the next months, over the next years, over the next decades, but it all starts in a few days.

Like either Monday or Tuesday, I expect Apple to release it.

And so I thought that what we might talk about now is, as you say, next week, Brett, we'll actually have it in our hands.

But for now, we can sort of talk about some of the things to look out for.

So those of us that are gonna download the update in a few days, we'll sort of say, oh, let me check this out.

And so that's what I thought that might sort of help me talk about it.

So I'm just gonna start to go through some of these and we can talk about them.

That Apple intelligence, and again, these are just the beginning ones.

So like some of the fancier stuff is coming later in 18.2. - Just the beginning. - Into that.

But even in these beginning ones, there's some really interesting things that I look forward to trying out and maybe they're gonna be duds or maybe they're gonna be interesting.

So as someone who, you know, as an attorney who writes for a living, I'm always very intrigued by the writing tools that are coming out.

And that's gonna be, you know, starting next week.

And it's gonna basically have three types of things you can do.

You can rewrite, you can proofread, or you can summarize.

So the rewrite is going to be, you can take something you've written like in an email or a text message or whatever, and you can say, Apple intelligence, would you please rewrite this for me in a way that is more playful, that is more professional, that is more whatever.

This is one of those things that I personally, because I'm, you know, an elitist, you know, snob, whatever, roll my eyes at, you know, I certainly know how to draft things in the language that I wanna use. - You could do it better. - But who knows?

I mean, maybe it will be helpful to me and maybe it will be helpful to others, but it's certainly interesting.

The proofread one does interest me because I have definitely used programs in the past, you know, apps in the past that will try to not just look for your spelling, but also your grammar, whether it's the built-in stuff in Microsoft Word or Grammarly or those sorts of services.

And sometimes, you know, having an editor is important.

I wish I had one on iPhone JD, I wouldn't have to send it to others.

So I actually think that, you know, it may be that every time I do a post on iPhone JD going forward, I will use the proofread feature and see if Apple finds a stupid mistake that I've made.

And that would be pretty cool. - Right, why not? - So that's nice.

And then the last of the writing tools is the summarize feature.

And again, summarize is gonna be a feature in a bunch of different contexts, but here within the writing, you know, you can take a bunch of text and you can generate a summary that, you know, either because you don't wanna read the text or because you're just curious about it.

So, I mean, just to sort of pause right there on the writing tools, you know, that stuff really could be interesting.

I'm curious to try it out. - Yeah, excellent stuff on that.

Just because, I mean, you know, just quickly to your point that when I was thinking about why not just run it through that summary or the proofread.

Proofread, you know, today it's like, none of us are gonna use Microsoft Word or probably any other writing tool without having some kind of a proofreading tech, right?

That is just kind of baked into what we do today.

And it's almost like you're ridiculous if you don't have spell check or grammar check turned on.

But you and I remember the days back in the day where we didn't even have anything.

And sometimes people would say, "Well, what are you gonna do?

Like, you're just, that's a crutch that you're using, right?

You should be a better writer."

But today we put that in.

I mean, my kids even use in school, they use Grammarly all the time because it's almost like that's expected today.

And I feel like, you know, to your point, this isn't like it's brand new, but we're just, I feel like we're seeing this is the beginning of it, even with writing tools, that it's almost gonna be taken for granted.

Like, why aren't you using that?

Like, you should be using that.

And in a few years, we're gonna look back on this and say, well, you know, of course, like this is just the natural evolution of that. - Yeah, I think that's a good point.

It is gonna become sort of just, we assume it in the future.

So another set of the app, the intelligence stuff that's coming out in a few days in 18.1 is gonna be some of the Siri changes.

Now there's gonna be some big changes next week, but there's also still gonna be some big changes that are not next week.

So to start with the most obvious, it's gonna be obvious that things are different because after you update your phone, Siri is going to look different.

It has a new look and feel. - Yes, right. - When you activate Siri, it's gonna cause like these glowing lights that go around your entire edge of your iPhone screen.

It's gonna look very different. - Like a halo around it. - Exactly.

But keep in mind that although visually, it will look very different, the actual changes in how it works are actually gonna be pretty limited next week.

So the things that it will do next week is, it'll be the ability to type to Siri, which is to a certain degree, you could do that before.

If you don't wanna talk, you can type.

But the one that might be better is the richer language understanding, which means that if you, and the example Apple gives is if you say, "Hey, Apple, can you, oh, wait, actually, I mean this."

You know, when you sort of stutter or fix your language, it will be able to sort of understand that and understand it if you stumble over your words.

So that will be interesting.

And related, it's gonna have more of a conversational feature.

So you'll be able to ask a question and then ask a second question, and it will understand, hopefully, that that could be a follow-up to the first question.

You know, right now, if you ask Siri to do something and then you ask it to do the next thing, it has no idea what the last thing that you asked was.

But now it can sort of put those in context.

So that could be interesting.

And then one area of knowledge, and this is gonna be sort of perhaps helpful, is Siri is going to understand Apple products, which means that if you're trying to figure out how to do something on your iPhone, on your iPad, on your Mac, you can actually ask Siri, and it will, hopefully, because it has access to all of the Apple Knowledge databases and everything else, it will be able to explain to you, this is how to do it.

And that could be really useful.

You know, you would think that it should have access to all of Apple's knowledge of their own products.

Who knows Apple products better than Apple itself?

And so this is probably one of the easiest ones for Apple to implement, but I'll be curious to see.

So that would be really cool.

But what it does not include next week is when Apple advertised this way back when, they said that Siri will be able to tap into, for example, chat GPT, so that if you ask it a question, that's not something local to your device, but something that's world knowledge, like, you know, what is the, you know, who was the 14th president of the United States?

There's something like that.

It will be able to tap into the chat GPT type stuff to get access to world knowledge and better questions.

That's coming in 18.2.

18.2 has just been released in the beta form.

So there are some people that are starting to test that right now.

And 18.2 has got a lot of other big changes too, we'll talk about.

But so anyway, so don't expect the whole, you know, this is not the entire new Siri, but it's at least the beginnings of the new Siri next week.

And so that's be pretty cool.

I know the rest of the talk about photos, but something. - Yeah, just real quickly on that, the natural language thing.

I think this will make a big difference for me if I don't have to stop and think about what I'm gonna ask Siri before I actually ask it.

Does that make sense? - Good point. - Like I actually have to give a, I miss a beat because I'm like, okay, before I initiate the she who should not be named, before I say anything, I'm like, how am I gonna phrase this so that it works?

If that natural language processing does, solves that problem, that makes me excited on that thing.

And then secondly, just real quick to that chat GPT thing, 'cause people are, you know, this whole thing about whether it goes to the cloud or not.

Right now, if you ask Sally a question that she cannot answer or he cannot answer on device, it'll say, well, here's what I found on the web, right?

And I feel like this is just that next evolution of that.

Like instead of me saying yes, or tapping on this set of three links that Siri serves up to me, it's like, no, I just want you to go out and find that and then tell me. - And just tell me, just tell me. - Right, exactly.

So I feel like those are the two things that I would get excited about with Siri.

And that, okay, so that should come in 18.1.

And you were already mentioning, I mean, goodness gracious, it's so hard to keep up with this, but 18.2 has just been released in sort of like the beta testers, right?

For the programmers and for the folks.

So that's not gonna be, but next week is 18.1, which I mean, like you said, now I'm just starting to realize how different this is gonna be and how much I'm gonna really kind of embrace this.

But of course, we gotta wait and see how it works in the real world. - Exactly, so that'll be interesting.

Another set of Apple intelligence improvements coming in a few days are the photos improvements.

And these actually particularly interest me partially because I love the photos app.

I love taking pictures.

I've got, who knows, I don't know, 60,000, 70,000.

I've got tons and tons and tons and tons of pictures.

So many pictures that it can be often hard to find the needle in the haystack when I'm looking for a picture of a needle in a haystack, for example.

And so one of the things that you will be able to do is you'll be able to talk or whatever, type, ask photos, I want you to find a picture that is such and such, and you can describe it.

You'll be able to say, I'm looking for a picture that maybe we're in this location and I think that there was this red house behind us and maybe it was said, you'll be able to just use your words to describe things and Siri, not Siri, photos will be able to use that to say, hey, is this the one that you're looking for?

And I think that'll be totally, totally useful.

So I'm looking forward to that.

And then another feature is, and I guess this is Apple intelligence, although versions of it have been for around for a long time, it's going to be able to clean up photos.

Again, the something that has been around for so long that we often have, we call it Photoshopping things.

But when you have that picture of you and your wife and it's so perfect, except for that one person over your shoulder, that's making a goofy face at it when you're at the beach, you can just use the tools to delete that.

And again, like I said, this has been in Photoshop for forever.

There's even a very simple version of this that's been in photos, but it's going to be more intelligent that it can actually clean it up and put something in its place that looks like what it's supposed to be in the picture.

And you can get into the ethical debates about, are you changing what the real world actually was when you do this?

If you were removing people from pictures, are you one step away from the Soviet Union taking people out of pictures when they're no longer in favor?

Those sorts of big picture questions.

But I think for most people, you just take a picture and you look at it afterwards and you're like, oh, I wish that stupid thing wasn't in the background.

Let me just delete that out of there and that'll be very useful.

And then another photos improvement with Apple Intelligence is that you'll be able to create a memory movie just by describing what you want to have in it.

Again, it's sort of like the finding a photo through a description, but you can say, create me a movie that is ski trips that we've taken between the years 1990 and 2000, or something like that.

And it will take that description and put together a little movie for you.

I always love memory movies.

It's a great way to look at pictures and stuff.

And so the ability to sort of describe it, I think it's gonna be fun playing with that and seeing what kind of movies it creates.

So those are the photos improvements.

Any other thing on the photos we're talking about that's coming out? - Well, it just, quickly, when you say this, 'cause I was gonna go to this in just a moment.

At the end of your post today, you link to this excellent, excellent video with Joanna Stern. - We should talk about that, yeah. - Yeah, at the Wall Street Journal, where she is interviewing Apple's vice president, Craig Federighi, otherwise known as Hair Force One, which is funny because that comes into the video.

I'm just gonna say, I watched this entire video.

I think it's 11 minutes.

I'm so glad that you linked to it, because while, I mean, both of us enjoy Joanna Stern very, very much, and her style of interviewing, but she gets so right to the point with Craig Federighi.

And just one of the things that you were talking about with that Photoshopping the photos, she does this, she just turns around and takes a selfie with her and Craig Federighi.

And then there's like a microphone hanging from the top, and there's a water bottle on the floor.

And she just uses her finger to mark that out.

Now, that's nothing new, and Craig actually talks to some of the, like, you know, Apple's not the first in this, but they're doing it right.

But I just found it so interesting just right after that, Jeff, that Craig talks about how they have talked internally multiple, multiple times about the, I guess it's almost like the ethics of allowing people to make changes to the photo, 'cause he even talks about there's one aspect of this where you want the photo to represent what you see, which I've always kind of thought in that way.

But then there's this whole other school of thought.

It's like, no, take a picture and then create art out of it, like create something different from the picture that you took.

I just, I have never heard an Apple executive kind of really talk about it at that level.

And I just thought that that was so interesting, you know, to your points there.

And it's like, it's almost like Apple, at least the sense I got from Craig, that they were trying to find a balance between, you know, exactly what you were just talking about, Jeff.

Like, hey, it's just somebody wants to take a picture, but they just wanna get this rock out of the way, or, you know, somebody was walking in the background.

It's something that simple and that really, that innocent more than anything else.

I see where Craig's going because people could take that to the nth degree.

But we can come back and talk a little bit more about this interview, but it was more than just the photos.

In fact, she really was doing a really good job, I think, of asking Craig about Apple's approach to this Apple intelligence, what's gonna come out in 18.1.

So, but just when you were talking about the photos, it just made me think about that because I just really appreciated the fact that apparently some people at Apple internally have thought about this of like, how much power do we give people, you know, to make some of these changes on the photos? - Yeah, in fact, I think it's appropriate that you broke away to talk about this video now because Craig made it clear, and this has been clear from what Apple's been saying since the summer when they first talked about all of this stuff, is that Apple is trying to take a cautious approach towards all of these AI improvements, not only because of ethical implications, like what you just described, but also because of other philosophical concerns, the privacy issues, you know, everything else.

One of the things that Craig mentions in this video is other vendors, and he doesn't name names, but we know we're talking about Google and ChatsGPT, other vendors in a rush to just get whatever the technology could do, they would get it out there as quick as possible, but they haven't really paused to think about big picture implications, or maybe they have in a way that they're putting themselves first.

He makes fun of the fact that other organizations, Google, they want to basically take all of the requests that you make, and they want to take all that information and use it for themselves to sort of learn more about you and learn more about things, where he says Apple is just the opposite.

It's incredibly privacy oriented.

You know, the things that you ask Siri, or just do with your phone with Apple Intelligence, to the extent that they can do it on device, they do it on device, which means Apple has zero way to figure out what you're doing, and even the stuff that has to happen off device, we've talked about this in the past, they have this very private cloud computing thing so that the request goes up to a private cloud and back, and then it's erased.

So Apple has no ability to take advantage of the information that you provide and use it for Apple's benefit.

Everything is just done in a very private way.

And so as a result, I think, and Craig Federici admitted that it means that Apple is not as fast in bringing stuff out to other people.

But as he and Joanna Stern points out, this has been Apple's history.

Apple did not create the first MP3 player, but by the time they came out with the iPod, it was the best.

They did not create the first smartphone.

You know, we had the Blackberry and the Trio and everything else.

But by the time they came out with the iPhone, it became the best.

And the same is true here.

Other people have been, and will continue to be first out of the gate with their AI features.

But Apple is taking a more cautious approach, looking towards the longterm of, we want to do this right from the beginning so that you can be proud of it and not as concerned about it.

And I am, believe me, especially in the world of AI, because with my other hat, with my lawyer hat, you know, in the law, I'm constantly thinking about how AI has the potential for good and also the potential for some chaos if you're not controlling it.

And so it's incredibly, you know, caution is, let's move forward, but let's move forward while we're thinking about what we're doing as we take each step.

I could not be, you know, happy with that.

So anyway, back to you. - Just real quick, I gotta say. - Go ahead. - Well, I know, I gotta say this.

It's so funny because in this video, Joanna almost like asked Craig, like, "Well, what are you using Siri for?"

In other words, they were talking about what's coming.

And I feel like he almost was stumbling because he basically says, "Well, I use it to open and close my garage and I set timers."

It's almost like, wait, wait, you're like Apple's executive vice president and that's all that you're really using Siri for?

And it's just so funny.

And then they go later on, and to your point, they were talking about chat GPT and open AI.

And Craig just made the comment, he's like, "Well, you're not using that to open and close your garage."

And I'm like, yeah, I mean, I guess that's true.

But anyway, it was so interesting to watch this.

When I felt like, I don't know if Craig like knew the questions beforehand.

Typically, they seem like they're a lot more, you know, prepared and stuff.

But I just really liked sort of a little bit of the off the cuff.

And the last thing quickly, talking about having Siri know Apple products, Joanna Stern at one point asks Siri, you know, "How does Craig Federici do his hair?"

And it talks about, it's a full silver mane.

I mean, it's like they have like this serious program to exactly answer the question about Craig Federici's hair force one, that's great.

Okay, enough of that fun.

Let's go back.

What else from 18.1 are we gonna be looking for next week?

Yeah. - The last parts of Apple Intelligence, just to wrap it up, are it can do things like, it can, if you have a message or an email and you wanna reply, it can offer an example of what you might wanna say in reply.

Now I will tell you that the people, the Apple calls a smart reply.

The people using the beta version of it have had very much raised eyebrows.

They say sometimes the reply that it suggests makes zero sense.

But hopefully it will get some better in, you know, get better over time, we'll see.

So that's one thing.

Another thing is it will help you to sort of prioritize notifications and prioritize things in mail.

And, you know, the example that Joanna gave in that video is, you know, right now, if you get a notification when your garage door, go back to the example, that example, if your garage door opens, you'll get a notification.

And if your garage door closes, you'll get a notification.

And if it happens a bunch over the course of a couple hours, you'll end up in your notification center. - That's a lot of notifications. - You know, 20 notifications.

And you're like, I don't, all I really wanna know is it opened and closed a bunch.

And right now at the end of all of that, it's closed.

That's all you wanna know.

And so that is precisely the feature that with the summarization of notifications, Apple Intelligence will provide you.

It will take, you know, a whole bunch of notifications that might be, you just, you know, you're not gonna take the time to go through them.

It'll say, look, I'll tell you what I think is important about this.

You know, there's a whole bunch of notifications about X.

And right now we are doing, we are in this Y state.

And that actually, when I saw that, I'm like, you know what?

That actually, that could be useful.

I would rather do that.

And even the summarization of emails and prioritizations, you know, part of me is like, you know what?

I need to read my own emails and everything else.

But then I was listening to another podcast today and they were talking about how, think about prioritization of emails and summarization of emails.

Think of it almost the same way that you think of subject lines.

You know how if you open up your inbox and your email, you look at all the subject lines and as long as they're decent, some people do a horrible job with subject lines 'cause it's just a bunch of rees.

But if it's a good subject line, you can tell from the subject line, should I be opening this email first?

Or is this something I could put off a few hours and get to later?

And summarization has the potential to be just as helpful that you can sort of say, you know, here's the things that, you know, the artificial intelligence believes that you might want to act on first.

And it may be right, it may be wrong, but at least it'll give you something to sort of help you prioritize your life. - It's an idea, right. - So anyway, so I mean, that's the big picture.

That's everything A to Z.

And again, this is just the 18.1.

So even though some of these are not as big as the features that we know that are coming in the future, there's a lot there.

And that's just the Apple intelligence portions of what's coming to 18.1.

We haven't even started talking about the other stuff.

So just to stop right there, that's a lot.

That's a lot coming in a part one update.

And we're gonna have it in our hands maybe Monday, maybe Tuesday, like just in a few days.

So that's actually pretty exciting. - You already mentioned, yeah.

Anything else you wanna? - Now let's move on to the next picture. - You already mentioned the AirPods Pro.

Do you wanna go there? - Let's talk about that, yeah.

Yeah, let's talk about that.

I think this is what I'm gonna be most excited about.

You had like two or three articles that you linked to today, Jeff, which just even got me more excited.

Number one, I didn't think I was gonna enjoy this as much.

Good morning, America. - It actually is pretty good, isn't it? - Well, for me, I mean, I could do without some of the journalistic editorials, but it's like just being able to go inside to the lab.

I mean, they call it the Fantasia lab.

And just some of the pictures in there and like how they're actually doing this testing was just absolutely fascinating.

I mean, I've been saying, we've been talking about the AirPods Pro 2 and really specifically what the fact that it's going to be able to give you a hearing test and frankly be able to use the AirPods Pro 2 as hearing aids, just absolutely incredible.

I mean, something sort of out of left field that you would think for a technology company, but I mean, they are doing it right from everything that I've seen so far.

And I'm just really excited about this aspect. - Yeah, people that need hearing aids and according to the studies, they say that 75% of people that could use a hearing aid don't use one because they think it's too much trouble or it's just too expensive.

And although you can get over the counter hearing aids for a hundred bucks, the good ones can cost over a thousand bucks and some people are like, "Oh, I'm not gonna spend that money."

But especially if you already own AirPod Pros 2 or maybe you just spend the 250 to get them because you also want to use them for, just as regular speakers and stuff like that, regular headphones, you have this added benefit of they have the ability to help you hear things and to help you distinguish the voice of the person you're listening to from all of the sound around you.

So that's gonna be pretty cool.

And also, of course, it gives you the ability to do a hearing test on your iPhone.

So you can see, are you even someone who needs a hearing aid?

So that's all very cool.

What the "Going Voting America" video and what you were referring to is it shows this lab that we've only seen once before in Apple's history that I can remember.

But it's this special rooms that have these things on the wall, this like padding sort of thing.

There's a name for this and I'm gonna say it wrong.

It's something like antebellum chamber or something.

Antebellum chamber, I'm forgetting the word. - Yeah, something like that. - There's a word out there that refers to it, but it means that the room is dead silent.

Like even the floors are suspended.

And when you go into these rooms, they described in the "Good Morning America" video that if you close the door in one of these rooms, it's so quiet.

It's like one of the most quiet places on earth that you can literally hear your own heartbeat.

It's so quiet.

But why does Apple do this?

Apple does this because when you create a perfectly quiet room, you can use it to test your equipment to make it incredibly sensitive, to pick out very precise locations of where sounds are coming from, to counter them and to help you use a hearing aid.

So, you know, this same chamber that is used for making the AirPods better just so that they provide better sound also allows them to have this medical technology of hearing aids.

So again, I don't think I need hearing aids right now, but maybe at some point in the future I will.

We'll find out when I take the test.

But I love the fact that so many people, and they did mention, you and I mentioned this a few weeks ago, that at the very end of the GMA section, they say that some people that, because of a stigma, might not want to get a hearing aid, they may feel more comfortable picking up a pair of AirPods. - Absolutely.

That's right. - Because everybody wears AirPods.

You know, even the kids wear AirPods, so to speak.

And so maybe if you're an older adult or whatever age you are, you need a hearing aid, you might feel more comfortable with something like this than going to make an appointment with a doctor and doing all that stuff and getting specially fitted things.

So it's really cool that Apple's doing this.

It shows that they are pushing the boundaries of what they can do in health.

I'm excited. - You link to a couple of other reviews here from "The Verge" and from "The Wall Street Journal" where people, well, journalists, they had early access to this hearing test and to the AirPods Pro.

And something that occurred to me, these journalists are probably not as old as you and I are, Jeff. (laughs) In other words, it's like, you know, it's like, hey, these young kids are using this and they have good reviews, but I'm like, okay, well, I'm excited to test it out with, you know, old fogies like myself that probably have actually lost some hearing over the years.

And it's like, I wanna see how that's gonna go.

Like, I'm just so excited about this little option here.

These are some good articles here that I'll make sure I put in the show notes from Chris Wells and "The Verge." - And they seem to say it works, yeah. - They do.

Yeah, I mean, that's what I'm saying.

It's like, I hope it works as good as they're saying because they're young and they have all of their hearing probably right now.

I don't know that for sure, but it just was a thought that occurred to me on this.

And just quickly going back to that "Good Morning America," you know, you and I just get so fascinated with like looking sort of the inside baseball.

And number one, I remember one of the points they said in this one room that you were describing, it has its own foundation in this room.

Like, it's not like that they just, you know, Elmer glued some foam boards to the wall.

Like, they built an entire building with its own foundation for this testing.

And, you know, it just occurred to me, if you watch the video, at one point they call it the Fantasia Lab.

And I was sitting there thinking like, why is that like, is that a Disney nod?

And then if you see this picture I've got on the screen right now, now it makes sense because in this story, this is Rebecca Jarvis from "Good Morning America."

She's sitting and she's basically surrounded.

It's like almost like a sphere that she's sitting in inside this room and there's speakers all over.

And at one point she's talking about how they made it sound like she's in a busy restaurant.

And she was describing how the way that the speakers work, she could think like there's people over there at the table.

There's, you know, plates clanking over there.

And if you look at this picture, you have to see this picture, it makes sense to me now.

'Cause if you were, and I remember when we first watched Fantasia, you remember that scene where it's just swirling around, you know, and Mickey's like just swirling around.

That's what it looks like.

It's like inside your, this sphere, it's like a swirling around, but it's just fun to kind of see some of the back end.

And just, you know, it never ceases to amaze me the expense that Apple goes to, to make sure that their testing is exactly the way that it should be.

But, you know, this is not, I just wanna emphasize, it doesn't matter if you need a hearing aid or don't need a hearing aid.

I mean, I feel like everybody that has AirPods Pro 2, when this comes out next week, you should go and take that hearing test just so that you're informed yourself and see what it can do to help you.

And then the next thing after that though, Jeff, is how are we going as a society?

How are we going to embrace this?

Are we gonna always wear AirPods Pro as we go around?

And I'm like, no, I can hear you.

I can hear you.

In fact, I can hear you better than if I didn't have the AirPods Pro.

'Cause I usually put them in when I'm on a plane or somewhere where I kind of wanna indicate to other people, I don't wanna talk to anybody, right?

Like I'm in my own little bubble.

But here I might actually mean the opposite of that.

Like, no, I want to be able to hear you better.

That's why I have my AirPods Pro in.

I don't know how that's gonna work with society, but it's gonna be something a little bit different. - It definitely will.

By the way, the word that I could not pronounce before is anechoic, which means free. - Okay. - Free from echo is what that means.

And the example given in the dictionary is, they treat the submarine with anechoic coatings to reduce sonar returns. - Wow.

Okay, well, there's your word of the day, folks. - Word of the day.

So 18.1, very exciting stuff coming. - Last week, we talked about the brand new and surprise of the iPad mini.

That was really, well, it was just last Monday, I think, or so, not this Monday, but the Monday past, that they just announced it out of the blue.

Now we've got a couple of reviews that you linked to, one from Federico Vittici, which is great, and also Jason Snell.

I thought these were both interesting in the fact that both reviewers, both Federico and Jason, were excited about a new iPad mini, but it's almost like, you know, it's not that much different than the old iPad mini.

I mean, some of the internals are different.

We talked about this pretty extensively last week, but it's good to see the reviews are coming out now. - Yeah, you can now buy one, you can get one in your hands, walk into a store and get one.

And it's, you know, people say that it's everything that you loved about the old iPad mini.

It's just now it's a little bit faster, and so it'll run Apple Intelligent stuff and everything else, and it's pretty much what you want.

I liked Federico's review, because he points out that, you know, for many people, and when I did my sort of review based on the announcement, my thoughts were, this sounds awesome, but like, I could not make it my main iPad.

But I could make it a fun little side iPad, and that's what Federico Vaticci said too, is that this is not the iPad that you use for work, or the one that you use for like your home, but this is that third device.

It's the third thing that you use. - The third device. - Just to fill the gaps that some of your other devices don't do.

And for those times that you just wanna sit on your couch and hold something that's incredibly small and light in your hand, just to surf the web, or maybe he uses it for playing video games, and I'm not a big gamer person, but you're just for these small, they are just watching some videos as an e-reader.

You know, there are certain tasks that this is just such the perfect thing is.

Now, is it worth spending 500 bucks just to get that one device that's in addition to your other devices?

Well, don't ask me, 'cause I'm the guy that spent $4,000 on an Apple Vision Pro.

But for other people, you need to make the decision if you're gonna, you know, use your money wisely.

Do you wanna have it?

But, you know, one thing that you don't find is you don't find people that have an iPad mini and say, "I hate it."

You really don't.

People that either say, "I love it.

It's my lovable little device."

Or they'll say, "I love it, but I don't use it enough.

Like I put it aside and I forget about it because so much of what I could do with the iPad mini, of course you could do with a bigger iPad or an iPhone or even a Mac." - Right, right. - But if you have a place in your life for the iPad mini, don't need a lot of space for it.

It was nice to see these reviews of people that tried it with their own hands and have said, you know, "It's really a lovable device." - I found it interesting.

I think it was Federico that said this, like he picked it up or maybe it was Jason.

And the iPad mini felt heavier than his 11-inch iPad Pro, which isn't true.

It's not heavier, but it's just, you can see, and I thought this picture was fantastic here that Federico put.

Like you can see the thickness of the iPad mini versus the iPad Pro.

Like it's just pretty incredible that it still is that big.

And the fact that it's still something that people would use.

And then, you know, the colors here.

Anyway, I just thought it was kind of interesting that they were talking about the weight of it, the fact that it has huge bezels.

I think it was Jason Snell that mentioned that, right?

And the fact that it's, you know, we're so used to the bezels on the edge is getting smaller and smaller.

And now you pick up an iPad mini and it seems so big.

To me, this picture here on Jason's review is what says it all, right?

I mean, honestly, one of the biggest uses, I think for general consumers for the iPad mini is reading books.

It's basically becomes a book tablet reader.

Now, one of them says here, to be fair, Apple knows their biggest users of the iPad mini are probably, I think he said doctors and maybe like restaurants, right?

For like point of sales.

Like that's really the biggest uses.

We talked about this last week as well.

Like that's where most of the people are gonna be using them there.

But anyway, I'm still happy to see that Apple is continuing to support this product, even though it kind of, you know, like Frederico says, it's kind of the third place.

I almost think of it as the fourth place 'cause I got my Mac, I got my iPhone.

I certainly have my 12, my 13 inch iPad pro.

And then if I did get an iPad mini, which I haven't, that would be like the fourth device, but I would only pick it up for very specific uses on that.

Speaking of devices that Apple uses, another excellent article in Wall Street Journal, Tim Cook on why Apple's huge bets will pay off.

I just found this to be fascinating.

Again, I'm always fascinated learning about sort of like the inside outs of the executives at Apple.

And I thought this was just really great about how, you know, Tim gets up, he checks his iPhone.

You know, to that point, he's already using some of those summary capabilities for his emails.

And he just talks about how it's great if I can just use that, you know, to save even a few seconds of time as opposed to reading an entire email that he can be able to use that.

But, you know, using the Apple Vision Pro, just thought it was really good to have some insight here from this article. - Yeah, it's, you know, the Apple executives are certainly getting out there right now, right?

We just talked about Craig Federighi doing the interview with Joanna Stern.

Here's another one from another Wall Street Journal publication, the magazine with Ben Cohen.

So, and you know, why are the Apple executives getting out there?

Because they want to sort of promote Apple intelligence.

And the reason I mentioned that is when I read this article, which you can read, if you don't subscribe to the Wall Street Journal, remember you can read it for free in Apple News if you have Apple News.

There's two parts of this article.

One part of it is here are the talking points that Tim Cook wants to put out there.

And again, this is what the title is, why Apple's huge bets will pay off. - Right, right. - They're talking about Apple intelligence.

I enjoyed reading it.

It was interesting, but in some ways, the CEO of the company, who's a very steady person, Tim Cook, you know, as cool a cucumber as they come, he is just delivering Apple's talking points about Apple intelligence.

It's interesting.

It's not really that different from what we heard this summer.

That's one part of the article, and that was fine.

The other part of the article is where Ben Cohen has a little bit behind the day in the life of Tim Cook and these little bitty tidbits that really, they don't matter for anything, Brett.

But they're the sort of things that I'm like, oh, I've never heard that before.

And these are the ones that I thought are worth talking about.

And they're so silly.

And again, I hate to focus on minutiae like this because none of it matters, but at the same time, it is sort of a little funny.

And so, you know, the one example of that, of course, and you could probably guess what I'm gonna mention.

One of them is he was asked what his favorite drink was and Tim Cook revealed that it is Diet Mountain Dew, which is fine if you like Mountain Dew.

But the funny part of it is Tim Cook says that he doesn't have it very often because they don't stock it in the cafeteria at Apple.

To which I think, wait a minute, you're the CEO.

If you wanna have it in the cafeteria, you can get it, like you're the person that can make that happen. - There's a way to make that happen. - You can have your own little mini fridge right there.

Have somebody put their one.

Apple has enough money that they can hire somebody whose only job is to restock the mini fridge of Diet Mountain Dew.

But anyway, Tim Cook is just such, you know, he may be one of the richest people alive, but he doesn't act like it.

And so he's like, oh, you know, they don't have it here.

So I don't have as much as I would.

So that was one little funny feature that I thought.

Another one is that they asked what Apple devices he used.

And his answer was all of them.

And at first you thought, oh, well you expect the CEO of a company to say, but like, I get the sense that he really does.

Like I get the sense that throughout the day, he is using an iPhone, he's using his iPad. - Yeah, agreed. - He's using different types of MacBooks.

He's using an iMac.

And I mean, that would make sense if you're the president of the company, you want to have experience throughout the day, every single day, using all the different devices.

He talks about how at night he likes to lie down on his sofa and wear his Apple Vision Pro and look straight up at the ceiling and watch movies on his ceiling, which I will just mention parenthetically, I had actually never done that before until I read this.

And I'm like, it's actually pretty cool.

I tried it and I was like, oh, that's a nice way to watch.

But like he literally like uses all the products throughout the day, every day.

It's almost too much for me because if I had like three different iPads, you know, we talk about the iPad mini being the one extra device.

I can't have multiple iPads and multiple Macs, but that's just me.

So that was a second tidbit.

And the last one that I'll mention is that he was asked about the, oh, now I'm blanking out.

What's the last interesting tidbit?

Oh, he was asked by the author about a feature of messages that you can use to give a name to your group chat.

And so for example, you and I have like, we talk in messages, but I have other messages groups that have like a bunch of my friends from college, right?

And so I have it pinned to the top of my messages group, but I have not done this.

But what you could do is you could name that group so that it's easier to see this is my whatever.

And so sure enough, he said that he had a group of messages which were text messages that he does with his roommates in college.

He went to Auburn.

And so when Ben Cohen asked him about it, Tim was like, "Oh, I'm not even familiar with that feature.

I don't use it."

And then in a follow-up conversation, Tim says, "Hey, hey, hey, I tried it out.

The one that you mentioned to me.

And I gave a name to my little group chat of my roommates."

And Ben Cohen's like, "Oh, what'd you call it?"

He's like, "I called it roommates." - Roommates, I know. - It's funny because of all the creative names you could come up with, you know, the mascot of Auburn or anything else or some silly name.

He just calls it the most generic name possible, roommates, which that's who Tim Cook is.

He's just a by the book, steady, nothing flashy.

Just call it what it is.

It's a very Tim Cook answer to just call it the most boring thing possible.

But it makes sense that that's who he is.

That's what he wants to do.

Anyway, those sorts of side stories, I'll let you go.

But those are the things I love about this article. - My favorite part is Ben Cohen is basically giving Tim Cook an iPhone tip.

'Cause if you read the article, I think, you know, he asked, you know, just like they were walking, I think from the Apple store or something like that.

And he's like, "Hey, so what did you name that group?"

And he goes, he says, "Tim Cook looks at him with this weird look as if like, 'What are you talking about?'"

And Ben's like, "Well, you can name the group." (laughing) And I'm just like, are you kidding me?

Like you're giving Tim Cook an iPhone tip.

I mean, I can't expect the man to know everything about it, but Tim, you should listen to In the News podcast because at the end of our podcast every week, we do an in the know tip and we'll give you some tips, Tim.

You can come here and listen to us.

We'll be happy to help you out on all of that.

I just thought that that was great.

So I'll make sure we link to that article in the Wall Street, it's not the Wall Street, well, it's Wall Street Journal Magazine.

It's where it is.

But anyway, it's really fun.

And I'm glad that you and I enjoyed reading that like we did.

Another thing that I thought was just really great, it was so precious that you shared this today, Jeff, that you and your son had a little bonding moment over panoramas, pictures. (laughing) I just love the way you explained this and I thought it was great.

Your son's using the Apple Vision Pro that you have and just really enjoyed looking at those panoramic photos.

I'll let you tell the story.

I thought it was just precious that you shared that today. - So Zach Hall at 9to5Mac did a great article about how one of the nice things about the Apple Vision Pro is that it's the best way to look at your photos because they're huge, they're big, and it just makes them so personable.

And so he was talking about it.

If you have a lot of photos from the past and you want to take that trip down memory lane, it's just the best.

And of course, that's just for a standard photo.

If you have a panoramic photo, then you literally feel like you're in the middle of things 'cause you look around, it's almost, it's not quite a 360, but it's a 180, but you can look left and you can look right and you can see things in your picture.

And of course, if you have a spatial video, a spatial photo, it makes it feel 3D and the Vision Pro can automatically apply that spatial effect to photos.

And so you can take this old photo that was taken in the 1980s, but you make it look three-dimensional and it comes to life.

And the nostalgia that it can provide is amazing.

So again, I've talked about this stuff in the past.

I love it.

Zach did a great job of describing how this is one of the key features and that he shared his Vision Pro with his father and his father was able to see people who have passed away.

And it's just really touching.

And so Zach also mentioned, by the way, in another article that Vimeo has come out with an app on the Apple Vision Pro, which is nice because now if you have videos saved in the Vimeo platform, which of course is like a competitor to YouTube, you can now watch those videos on your Vision Pro, which is really nice 'cause they have a native app.

So last night, after I read Zach's articles, I actually went, I was like, I wanna try this Vimeo app.

And so I installed it, it's free.

I put it on my Vision Pro.

And when I loaded Vimeo, I saw, and Brett, I had forgotten about this, but literally a dozen years ago, I created a movie in like iMovie of my grandmother, who's no longer alive, got this award.

Now I'm cracking up because I'm such a sap.

But at the World War II Museum, which is a local museum in New Orleans, World War II Museum.

She had received some award because of her brother who had passed away during World War II.

And I had recorded the whole thing and created a little video of it.

And because it was in my Vimeo collection, I haven't watched this in probably a dozen years.

And so I found myself just, you know, tearing up watching my grandmother again, except the speech, her little talk.

So I myself felt that nostalgia that Zach was talking about in the article.

So it's just really cool.

So, you know, bravo to Zach for doing this article and reminding us why the Apple Vision Pro is so amazing when it comes to photos.

And then also just mention, while we're talking about the Apple Vision Pro and we're talking about Vimeo, I always say that the best experiences on the Vision Pro are these spatial videos that Apple creates.

And there was a new one that came out last week from the NBA All-Stars, which is amazing.

You feel like you're right there on the court watching these incredible basketball players make these incredible shots.

And you could not be any closer.

It's like people would pay thousands of dollars to get seats to see this in real life.

And here I am just in my living room experiencing it.

But what I really want is for, number one, Apple to create even more spatial videos, but number two, more third parties to create it, which is why I was excited to discover this week.

And I gave a link to this thing called India something or other, that's just a bunch of incredibly immersive video.

But they are super high quality.

They're not quite as good as the Apple stuff, but they're very close and they're immersive.

And there are these amazing colors and places that I would probably never travel to, but you really feel like you're there.

So that's one thing.

And then I just mentioned the Vimeo app.

Vimeo, like YouTube, has something called 360 degree apps.

So they are surround sound, they're surround apps.

Now the problem is the quality of them.

I think the quality is 4K and you might say, "Oh, 4K, that's really good."

But 4K in an immersive environment, it's not good enough.

You really want to have 8K and these amazing cameras like what Apple has to really feel like, when you're watching an Apple created spatial video, you feel like you're there.

When you watch a Vimeo or a YouTube 360 video, it's cool, but you sort of feel like you're in an amusement park ride.

It's fun, but it's not realistic because it's just a little bit blurry.

Don't get me wrong, it's still cool.

Like there was one that I watched last night where I am on a surfboard going through, you know how in like Hawaii, they have these huge waves that are like 20 feet high and the wave crests over and you're going through the wave. - Oh yeah, you're shooting through the tube. - I have never done that before in my real life and doing it in this immersive setting where I can look up and I can see the water on top of me as the waves crest over. - Oh wow. - Pretty amazing, but again, because the quality wasn't perfect, I could sort of tell that it was a little blurry and stuff.

So it wasn't as convincing, although still fun to watch.

So I love the fact that we now have other vendors just trying to come up with stuff and this will come, both YouTube's gonna have its own app at some point, I hope, Vimeo already does.

At some point in the future, we will have the tools that people can create videos that are as good as apples.

And that's what I look forward to, because then in a year or two, if I'm just curious about, I've never been to such and such a city, I've never been to Seattle, but I want somebody who really does know Seattle to find some of the coolest things you can see there and create some immersive videos so that I can, in my Vision Pro, feel like I'm there.

So anyway, that's enough Vision Pro for today, but between nostalgia from the past and experiencing things that you've never done before, these are the sort of things that is gonna make this platform better and something for the future. - This is how nerdy I am, Jeff.

When you're telling me that story about watching the movie with your grandmother and you're starting to tear up, did you have to, like, did any tears get on the Vision Pro?

Did you have to like wipe, did you have to take them off to wipe the tear away? - Since you're asking and since I'm under cross-examination, did I have to swear under oath?

Yes, Brett, I did have to pause, take them off, wipe the tears off my face and put it back.

And did I have to do that a second time?

Yes, I did. - I don't care how many times, it's just like, okay, just make sure the Vision Pro is okay.

This is how bad it gets.

Okay, that's funny.

We talked about the iPad Mini, using that as a book reader.

So you can either spend $400 to get a new iPad Mini if you need a book reader, or how about trying just to pay $40 for a new accessory called Bookcase.

I'm so glad you leaked to this today.

It's from Astro Pad Studio.

And it's almost just like a little, it's almost, if you want your, if you want to read books in your iPhone, but you know, it's too small to hold the iPhone right in front of you, all you need is just a little tiny, I mean, I don't know, I call it a case.

It's not really even a case though.

It's just a tray.

A tray, that's a good way to describe it.

I just thought this was brilliant though.

We've seen some other things from Astro Pad Studio before, but this is really cute.

It is called literally the Bookcase.

And it looks like it's a MagSafe case, a tray, I like that, where you just laid your iPhone in, but it gives you a little bit something else to hold on to so you can read your book nicely. - Yeah, it's a little bit wider.

So you have a place to put your fingers.

And if your fingers are holding the Bookcase, you're not obscuring the screen.

So you can see the words on the screen without covering them with your hands.

As soon as I saw this, I'm like, this makes perfect, perfect sense to me.

I can also see it being useful, maybe even for just scrolling webpages.

Although for that, you need to touch more to scroll down.

But I mean, this is one of those devices that, as soon as you see it, you think, why didn't I think of that?

This makes a lot of sense.

So if you're a person who does a lot of reading with your iPhone, I really think that this is, this looks like a fantastic product.

I would love to try one myself and see how it works, but it looks like, of course, it makes so much sense. - Yeah, well, okay, first of all, it's not just for an iPhone, it'll work with an Android.

But I'm looking here, I think, in other words, to flip the page or go to the next page, you have to touch the screen, right?

There's not like an embedded button or anything on there.

I'll have to look at this just a little bit. - Yeah, but only 40 bucks, I'm not sure if it has buttons in it. - Oh, set custom reading shortcuts.

Okay, so I think you can't, 'cause it's got embedded NFC.

So somehow you could do that.

Anyway, just really great.

Again, I like AstroPad, folks.

It just is, they've done some really cute things in the past, and like you said, it's like, this is a no-brainer, are you kidding me?

I wish I had a thought about that.

That's great.

We've talked about driver's license in the Apple Wallet, and now another state has joined the party, Iowa.

Welcome, Iowa.

We had Ohio, we have Iowa.

We just need some more Is and Os to join.

But I mean, what are we up to now?

I don't know if it says in this article, it's gotta be at least seven or eight different states now that allow you to have the digital ID.

I still, I still, Jeff, have not been able to use it at a TSA checkpoint, 'cause really that's the only place that I can think that I'm able to use it in Ohio now, but I'm ready.

The thing is, I think I tried to show it once to somebody when, I forget what airport that I was at, but they just kind of looked at me like, no, I need your physical.

Like, they didn't even try to ask about it or understand it.

So I know it's, I know kind of, I'm ahead of the curve a little bit on this, but it's like, come on, let's everybody get on board here.

But if you're in Iowa, hey, you can put your driver's license in Apple Wallet now.

That's good. - Absolutely, it's great.

And I hope more states get this. - Where you at segment.

We, I started reading this article from you today and I'm like, wait a minute, didn't he already report on a story about a person putting an air tag and a campaign sign?

This one's even better though, I like it.

You know, I love how they start.

This is from Gizmodo.

We're in the final two weeks before the presidential election, of course, right?

So this is currently peak campaign sign stealing season.

What I liked about this so much is not the fact that they just put an air tag, but the people actually went and confronted, which looks to me like a regular suburban neighborhood with a couple of kids that ended up having a whole trunk full of a bunch of campaign signs.

And I just love the fact that they were talking about it.

And like the kids had no idea that they were being tracked when they opened that trunk.

I mean, there had to be a couple of hundred signs in there that they had just taken from all over the different neighborhoods.

And I love how the owners were like saying, hey, you've trespassed, number one, on all of our properties.

And number two, the total amount of signs that you've stolen could potentially be a felony.

I don't know about that.

I'm not really sure.

Was this Minnesota or Missouri?

I don't know Missouri law specifically all that, but I just liked the fact that they were kind of tracking that and they kind of captured it in a video as well. - Yeah, and of course, once they confronted the parents, then the teenager's like, yeah, I did it.

I know it was the wrong thing to do. - Right, right. - He heard about other people doing it, so he figured he would go pick up all the Harrah signs and stick them in his trunk.

But I'm glad that she was able to get her sign back.

I mean, it's silly though.

We can understand that frustration that, you know, you feel passionate about a candidate and I mean, your first amendment rights to have that sign out there and you want to do it. - That's right. - And the people keep stealing it and that drives you crazy.

So you can use a little air tag and find, I'm glad that she was able to find out what happened.

I'm also glad that when she confronted the house of the thief, there were no incidents.

I mean, she did not get the cops involved. - I thought the same thing. - Right. - It could have been a bad thing. - Right. - Turned out it was just sort of a silly story.

But I understand it.

And you know, this is one story, the one that we had a couple months ago was somebody who was actually a Florida candidate and he himself had put, you know, he had his campaign had put signs out that were stolen and frustrated him 'cause he's like, "I paid good money "to try to get the word out and they're stealing my signs."

And he was able to track it down with the air tags.

So, you know, whatever it is that's being stolen from you, air tags can help to find it. - Air tags can help.

I think, I do appreciate, I just have to say, no matter what side that you fall on, just the video I thought was well done, like nobody came to fist to cuffs, they're like, "Everybody stayed calm in this."

You know, they weren't trying, they just like, "Hey, I just wanted to get my property back."

And you know, if you have to go, if you feel the need to do that, I think that was the appropriate way to go, even though they did call the police officers that ended up coming on there as well.

Yeah.

Okay, that was where you're at.

Now in the know. - In the know. - Because of all the excitement about the AirPods Pro and the hearing test and everything, I just wanted to remind a couple of tips that I constantly use, and I think I use them so much that I think maybe some people may not even be aware of them.

First of all, here's my bonus tip on the AirPods Pro, or any AirPods.

You can actually go into your phone when they're connected to your phone and you can rename them.

I do this all the time.

First of all, because I've had a couple of pairs, I like to make sure that I'm getting my pair, 'cause my family members have their pairs as well.

And you know, sometimes if they open it close to my phone, it may recognize it.

And it's like, I like to make sure that I name my AirPods so that I know exactly the ones that I'm connecting to.

And then next, this I use every single day, and I'm constantly switching back in different modes in what Apple generally calls noise control.

So now, I think of three modes, even though Apple calls them, there are four modes.

I mean, you can turn all noise control modes off.

And I guess that's one option.

I never do that.

I always have one of the other three turned on, and that is transparency, which basically lets, it's almost like the sound just comes right through my AirPods.

Like there's no noise canceling, there's no noise dampening is what I call it.

The next step up from that is adaptive audio.

Now, this is only on AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods Pro, AirPods 4 with active noise cancellation.

But the adaptive audio, I do this a lot.

I leave this on as I'm walking through a city, for example, and it'll be listening.

And if there is a jackhammer or a loud truck or a siren, from an ambulance or something coming by, it'll immediately dampen the noise for me, not completely.

I can still hear what's going on, and I can still hear like conversations and stuff, but at least takes that very loud noise and tamps it down a little bit.

And then the third mode is complete noise cancellation.

It completely blocks out all external noise to help you focus.

Now, again, this is nothing new.

Bose has had over the ear headphones for years that people just love.

I never got into the Bose, but I really got on board with the AirPods Pro.

Now, the tip here is just the different ways to switch between those modes.

Now, you can go in, one of the ways that I constantly do this on my iPhone when my AirPods Pro are in my ears is I'll go into the control center, just swipe down to the control center, tap and hold on the audio slider.

And at the bottom, then it comes up, you can see a little icon that tells you what mode that you're currently in.

And if you tap on that, then you can switch between adaptive transparency or noise cancellation.

So that's one way, but I feel like sometimes that just really takes a lot of steps to do.

The other way is that you can go into settings and customize how you can control and what noise control modes that it goes through by clicking and holding on the stem of your AirPods.

And so I have all three modes click on.

So if I click and hold on my AirPods Pro stem right now, it'll go to whatever that next toggle would be.

So if I'm currently in transparency, it'll go to adaptive.

It'll go from adaptive to noise cancellation.

And then if I hold, tap and hold again, it'll go all the way back to transparency.

I know that was a lot to throw out there, but I just wanted to remind folks that there are excellent ways to control the noise, you know, to jump and toggle between the different settings and the noise control modes.

And if you don't want all three to be available on your tap and hold on the stem, you can go in into the settings on your, in Bluetooth for the AirPods Pro.

And you can say, I only wanna switch between transparency and noise cancellation, and that's it.

So, you know, you won't even go to adaptive if you do that.

But just wanted to let people know the different ways to switch between the noise cancellation, because if we start, you know, from next week on, start wearing the AirPods Pro even more, if I have it in my ear all the time now, I just wanna make sure that I've got really quick ways to toggle between the different noise control modes. - Before I get to my tip, let me sort of give my tip to your tip, which is- - Okay, good. - It sounds like you have your AirPods set up to switch between all three different modes.

I used to have that, Brett.

I will tell you, I changed it, and I think I'm happy with this.

And so I encourage you, Brett, and anyone listening to me, the same.

Mine now only switches between two of the modes, adaptive and noise cancellation.

And the reason I did that is because for me, adaptive mode, it's, I think I could rename adaptive mode.

And if I had to rename it, I would call it transparency mode plus, because in my mind, all it is is it's transparency mode, which means you hear the outside world, but it's just a little bit better because if something is too loud in the outside world, it dampens it.

If something's too obnoxious, it amps it.

And so it's a way to listen to the outside world, but have a little sanity in there by controlling things that are too loud so that it doesn't disturb the music that you're listening to, the podcast you're listening to, et cetera.

And I found that for me, there was really no circumstance in which I was using transparency mode where I wouldn't be just as happy with adaptive mode.

Now, on the other hand, I often do wanna have full noise cancellation mode because I'm doing dishes and I wanna dampen out the sound of the water, or I'm doing whatever, and I just wanna make the outside world.

Even if I'm just in my office with my noise cancellation on, I don't hear the air conditioning noise.

Not that it's a big noise, but it just makes it even nicer for listening.

So I have decided, I used to have it the way that you have it, but then I switched it from just switching between adaptive and noise cancellation.

And to me, that's the best approach.

It's an either or.

I'm either gonna have the noise cancellation or I'm not gonna have it, except when I really, really need it.

And so that's my tip off of your tip is think about, do whatever you wanna do, but if you haven't tried this yet, I sort of like just having the two of those.

So that's my tip.

That's my tip on your tip.

Okay.

As for my tip, it's actually not even my tip.

This is actually my brother's tip.

This is something that my brother recommended to me and it makes perfect sense.

My brother, Kevin, uses an Apple TV, as many of us do.

And one of the things that he told me that he often watches on his Apple TV are YouTube videos.

And he noticed recently, very recently, that a bunch of YouTube videos that he would often watch weren't playing on the Apple TV.

And at first he thought, "Oh, well maybe like the YouTube is broken "or that video has been removed from YouTube."

And yet he found that the same video would play perfectly well on his iPhone.

So it's like, "What is this?

"It's clearly on YouTube."

So it turned out that, and I've done some research this morning, and sure enough, you see people talking about this on the internet.

There's some little, something's happened with YouTube and Apple TV that it wasn't working perfectly.

But the solution, which is what I wanna share with you today, is if you update your Apple TV to the latest software, it appears to solve the fix for most people.

Although I did find one person who posted on the internet that he was still having problems.

And now when I saw this, I'm like, "Okay, this is such a simple tip.

"Update your Apple TV.

"Don't we all update all of our devices automatically?"

And so sure enough, Brett, this morning before I came into work, I went to my television and I turned on my Apple TV because I have automatic updates turned on.

I just assumed that my Apple TV was running the latest version and it wasn't.

My Apple TV was still running version 17, like the one that was as of last September.

The TV OS 18, which came out, I wanna say the first week of October now or something, my Apple TV, I guess eventually, it would have gotten around to updating to it, but it hadn't done so yet.

And so it's very easy to do.

You just go into the settings app on your Apple TV, you go to system, and then under system, you'll see update.

And so I just, I pressed update.

It said, sure enough, there's something new out, it's 18.

And so it installed that update.

And so I got myself updated.

And in fact, I'll mention that next week, I think it's gonna be next week at least, I think we're gonna see TV OS 18.1, which I understand actually tweaks a couple other things.

So the point of all of this is, I mean, yes, you should always install the updates.

And when it comes to your iPhone and your iPad, you're probably very aware of the updates 'cause you're getting alerts on the device and everything else.

But don't forget about the Apple TV.

It needs to be updated from time to time too.

And especially if you're one of the people that's been suffering with some YouTube videos not playing the way they should, like they has a black screen, like you can see the controls at the bottom, but the video itself is just completely black.

Just update your Apple TV and hopefully it will fix it for you like it did for my brother.

So thank you to Kevin for giving me that tip.

And for anyone else out there that needs it, it's a good one, so. - Yeah, that's a great tip.

And I think like you, I've got mine to do set to update automatically, but you know, it's really easy to go into the settings and check that and just see if there, I haven't run into that with YouTube and we do, we watch quite a bit of YouTube on the Apple TV, but anyway, great tip.

If you're experiencing that, it's good to go in and check if you have the update.

All right, well, I'm gonna end the same way that I started.

I'm very excited about talking with you next week, Jeff.

I mean, it'll be good because then hopefully by that time, we'll have 18.1, we'll have enough time that we can go in and check it out.

I will have tested my hearing multiple times, probably by that time.

So it'll be good.

We'll talk with you next week, Jeff. - It's gonna be an exciting week.

Talk to you next week.